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Plain Sight
}} The Order of the Stick succeed where the Linear Guild failed by seeing through Girard's double bluff. Cast * The Order of the Stick ** Roy Greenhilt ◀ ▶ ** Haley Starshine ◀ ▶ ** Elan ◀ ▶ ** Belkar Bitterleaf ◀ ▶ ** Durkon Thundershield (as vampire) ◀ ▶ * Mr. Scruffy ◀ ▶ * The Linear Guild ** Nale ◀ ▶ ** Zz'dtri ◀ ▶ ** Malack ◀ ▶ * Spiky the Barbed Devil ◀ ▶ * Zz'dtri's Piscodaemon ◀ ▶ Transcript Haley (whispering): —and the kicker is, she said they've been trying to reach us for three hours! The phantasm must have blocked the earlier Sending spells. Elan (whispering): Oh man! Xykon could be here any minute now! Roy (whispering): OK...maybe we can figure out some way to— Belkar (whispering): Zip it! They're coming back out! Nale: —thinks he's so friggin' smart, following the good guys. Nale: If we had just searched the valley on our own—like we were going to before HE got involved—we might have found it by now! Malack: As much as I enjoy your continued failure to achieve— Malack: ... Malack: Hrrm. Malack can see the Order of the Stick behind Elan's Silent Image wall illusion, due to True Seeing not having worn off yet. Durkon: Master? Do you see something? Malack: ...No, brother. Malack: Come along. Nale: MALACK! Stop stalling and get your tail in here! Nale slams the door shut, "SLAM!!" Roy: Huh. That was weird. Haley: Are they coming back? Roy: No...I don't think so. Roy: Look. The Order of the Stick enter the room with the pillar. Belkar: Oh come on! Are you friggin' kidding me? Again with the fake-out?? Belkar: I'm gonna flip out if we need to spend the whole next book looking for it again! Roy: Belkar, shush. Roy: Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Haley: You mean...that now, after illusions and traps and fake coordinates and tricks and treachery— Haley: ...NOW would be the perfect time for a double bluff? Roy: That— Roy stabs Greenhilt into the pillar. Roy: —and this pillar doesn't look load-bearing to me. A piece of the pillar crumbles away, revealing lead sheeting. Haley: Lead sheeting! Roy: The poor man's divination blocker. Belkar: Stop suppressing our rupture, you electroresistive niche! Roy: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you— Roy slashes through the lead sheeting... ...revealing Girard's Gate. Roy: Girard's Gate. Elan: Hooray! We found it! Haley: So that's great, but have you figured out any sort of plan for how to guard it? Roy: Sure. Roy: I'm going to destroy it. D&D Context * Roy notices that the pillar is not load-bearing, a use of his Knowledge (Architecture and engineering) skill. Roy reveals he has this skill in #808. * Both Detect Magic and Locate Object are foiled by even a thin Lead Sheet. And since the wall is not an illusion, True Seeing cannot penetrate it either. Thus the spells used by the Linear Guild in the previous strip all failed to detect the Gate. Trivia * In the first panel, Haley is describing the essence of the Sending message that we saw begin in the last panel of #893, Closing In. Its contents reference the events of #827, Crushed, and mirror a previous Sending addressed to Hinjo in #865, Getting Defensive. * Malack was able to see through Elan's Silent Image thanks to the fact that True Seeing has a duration of 1 minute per level. He doesn't reveal the Order's presence, however, because he's honoring Durkon's last request. * Belkar's comment in panel 9, page 1 refers to how Girad faked out the Order with false coordinates for the gate in #694, Poor Coordination. * Haley's comment about the perfect time for a double-bluff refer to her reasons in #697, Stuck in the Sand Trap, for doubting that Girard would've tried one at that point. * Belkar's comments in panel 1, page 2 recall his earlier quip when using the Lead Sheet to defeat Miko's Detect Evil in #202, Scanning.... The gag was also used by Niu in #779, They Follow His Lead. External Links * 895}} View the comic * 288955}} View the discussion thread Category:Girard's Gate Destroyed